A Daily Blog (est. 10/2012) dedicated to quality writing, original content and a healthy dose of entertainment from "A Vagabond in God's Big Pond" Explore etymology with WORLD WIDE WORDS (Archived Link). PUNS FOR INTELLIGENT PEOPLE will tickle your fancy. The WAYBAC MACHINE will take you back in time. +++Plus +++ read my book ALPHA OMEGA M.D. coming in Spring of 2019. Read about The Space Family McKinney at your own pace in = THE RETURN TRIP and The NULL Solution, Episode Catalogs for both in the "links" section. as well as Constance Caraway ~ Forever Mastadon. We are in the midst of Alpha Omega M.D., concluding near the end of the year. — If you have not viewed this blog on a PC or Tablet, you don't know what you're missing.

Tag Archives: Ernest Hemingway

Constance Caraway P.I. ~ Episode 74

…the CCPI gang needs a safe place to stash the latest discombobulated version of Libby…

Whacked-out Willy (his new nickname) had called his office sanctuary ‘the best kept secret’ around and is proud of it.

But someone had found it about three weeks ago, as CCPI discovered, but nothing seemed to be missing and the ensuing mess was restored to its previous disorder by Martin. The entire remote wing of the university had been since sealed from regular access. To this very moment, no one knows who broke in.

When it came to finding a safe place to stash the latest discombobulated version of Libby, they need not look any further than his office, a three room suite with its own bathroom. The biggest room by square footage is the 15 x 15 front room, serving as place of work, kitchenette and the den; a windowless covey hole is filled by books from top to bottom, end to end.

Most of those books would be classified as reference, a good number of which are historical in nature, the Civil War in particular. In the fiction section, the complete works of Ernest Hemingway dominate several shelves from the earliest days working for The Kansas City Star to his final days in Idaho; reporter notes in Kansas to The Dangerous Summer in Life Magazine. You get two guesses at who is Libby’s favorite writer, the first one doesn’t count.

“This place is not big enough to care for someone in Willard’s present condition,” Constance interjects, with full knowledge of the Kimbark house being off-limits as well.

“I know some people over at the Hospital, maybe we can get him into a private room on the fifth floor?” Martin proposes.

“Why the 5th floor?”

“That’s the psycho ward.”

“Tell them he’s your brother or something, just make sure that the doctor in charge is someone you can trust.” Connie wants to make sure the scientist is not nabbed again.

At that point Fanny enters Willard’s office suite, pushing none other than Willard in his wheelchair.

“Fanny!?” Her friend had been tending to Libby down the hall.

“He wanted to come, seemed to recognize his surroundings, he pointed the way.”

Constance Caraway P.I. ~ Episode 56

…a prisoner of his own mind…

“We will leave him in your care, but I need your personal guarantee that you will not tamper with him. As long as he maintains physical viability, leave the rest alone. I mean it.” Martin takes responsibility for his friend.

“Message received loud and clear,” the doctor hears.

“And I will be calling you every day for updates on his condition. And if anyone else calls about his considering his health or lack thereof… you tell them he didn’t make it. No one beside us is to know that he is still alive.”

“I think I understand where you are coming from. That is agreeable. If you call me at home, at this number,” he hands Kamen a doctor’s script with his home telephone, “say 8:00 PM sharp, I will be available.”

‘Don’t leave Martin; I have things to tell you. Mastadon was misspelled, I don’t know why. Wolf told me that they were in control; a Mastodon is like a Wooly Mammoth, lived 12,000 years ago, identified the age of one correctly sometime, I do not remember. Take me with you, I know you told Doctor to fake my death, don’t allow that to be prophetic. The dinosaurs walked the planet with the mammoth and humans. I sure could go for a plate of steak ‘n eggs. Take care of Martin, you mystery girls, he is my only hope, tell him to look in my bookcase, it is behind FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. Hemingway is one of my guilty pleasures; hear that he drinks whiskey, smokes Cuban cigars loves adventure. I want to be the swashbuckling type, danger around every corner. My complete paper is behind THE SUN ALSO RISES, do not know why I had to hide it something about mastodon there too. Never did trust that Wolf, but he was at the meeting in the woods by my house, Auntie Joe didn’t like him from the start, should have booted him out.’

“We are going to head back to the University Doctor Steinberg. Maybe the answers we are looking for is right under our noses.”

Will Libby hears clearly and would nod his approval if only he could move his head.

10 Historically

Important Notebooks

You’ll find them in almost every shop and of varying shapes and sizes, but, at times, the humble notebook has actually played an important part in history. From influencing philosophical thought to illuminating the theory behind The Origin of Species, these examples will show you how important a little copy for keeping records in can be. Some revealed hidden truths about their writers posthumously, while some just helped the writer organize their mind, but all have been important in human history.

10. Beethoven’s

‘conversation notebooks’

Beethoven is notorious for always having carried around a notebook (as well as being an acclaimed composer, obviously). In fact, paintings of him usually had him holding one of his notebooks.

They were just published in full by Walter Nohl of Munich, after being the most prized possession of the Berlin State Library’s Music Department. He used them to compose music, of course, but also to write down quotations of significance to him – things like ‘Tis said, that art is long, and life but fleeting:—Nay; life is long, and brief the span of art; If e’re her breath vouchsafes with gods a meeting, A moment’s favor ’tis of which we’ve had a part.’ He called his notebooks ‘conversation notebooks’. As he was entirely deaf for the last 12 years of his life, Beethoven handed these to his conversation partners whenever he wished to talk. He usually replied orally.

Topics included in his notebooks were worries about indigestion and his eye trouble, food, writing paper and the search for a good apartment – something many of us have experienced!

9. Hemingway’s notebooks

Hemingway is so famous for his love of notebooks that Moleskine boasts about being ‘the heir and successor to the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway’. Hemingway himself said ‘I belong to this notebook and this pencil.’ He was seldom seen without a notebook. He often wrote in little black notebooks, the predecessors to Moleskines, in Parisian cafés. He was a passionate devotee to a pencil and pocket notebook.

In fact, he brought them almost everywhere, not just to cafés – on trains and to bullfights, for example, for note-taking. He also used them to jot down expensesand even to record his wife’s menstrual cycles.

He has been described by Slate as being ‘what we would now call a neurotic’, and keeping records in notebooks helped him organize his thoughts.

8. The Fairchild notebooks

The Fairchild patent notebooks were crucial to our computerised world today. Their contents revolutionized the science and manufacture of microelectronics and launched the incredible growth of Silicon Valley. Ideas including modern semiconductor manufacture, integrated circuits, the technology that lets us power portable digital devices (like the phone or tablet you might be holding right now) and semiconductor memory all came from these notebooks. The engineering notebooks were kept by prominent people like Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce (founders of Intel), Jean Hoerni, Julius Blank, Eugene Kleiner, Victor Grinich, Jay Last, and Sheldon Roberts.

A conservation project was started for them at the Computer History Museumtwo years ago when Texas Instruments donated the notebooks to the museum. Kathleen Orlenko assessed over 1,000 of the notebooks, dating from 1957 through the 70s.

7. Thomas Edison’s notebooks

Thomas Edison amassed approximately five million pages of writing in his sixty-year career as an inventor. He used notebooks to organize notes on his inventions and innovations. A note at the end of his pocket notebook for October 1870 says ‘all new inventions I will here after keep a full record’. These notebooks were used by him and his colleagues. The Thomas Edison National Historical Park has more than 3,000 of these notebooks, each with around 280 pages. It’s believed that his prolific writing and experimenting may have stretched up to 3,500 notebooks. He received the most US patents ever awarded to one person (1,093).

These included the light bulb, alkaline battery, phonograph and motion picture camera. Keeping notebooks was a life-long habit of his that helped him structure his ideas from conception to execution – tremendously important for our world today. He used them for everything, from brainstorming to recording results, and they helped him pursue his goal of making one minor invention every 10 days and one major one every six months.

Not only did they help him in his incredible productivity, the notebooks are also a highly valuable tool for modern-day historians trying to get an insight into his mind.

6. Heidegger’s black notebooks

German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s black notebooks sparked controversy when they were published in March 2014. He was widely viewed as a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition (a branch of philosophy that includes existentialism, German idealism, psychoanalytic theory and French feminism and the rejection of science as the ultimate method of understanding phenomena, among others). He became professor of philosophy at Freiburg. He was the most important Continental philosopher of the 20th century. His book Being and Time is a seminal work in the Continental tradition and he is widely considered the father of modern atheistic existentialism. He also made adifference outside philosophy, in areas as varied as architecture and theology.

He was involved in Nazism, but it was thought that this was a personal matter, not one that had leaked into his philosophical thinking – until, that is, the publication of his Black Notebooks. Heidegger wrote a kind of philosophical diary in little black-covered notebooks over forty years. They show that he actually incorporate anti-Semitic ideas into his philosophy, like when he wrote ‘the Jews, with their marked gift for calculating, live, already for the longest time, according to the principle of race, which is why they are resisting its consistent application with utmost violence.’

This has led to people wondering whether all of his highly influential ideas were contaminated by Nazism. As his writings inspired some of the most important thinkers of the modern era, these notebooks cast their reliability into doubt.

5. Sartre’s notebooks

Works published during philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s life showed that he agreed with Hegel that humans struggle against one another to win recognition but rejected some other aspects of Hegel’s philosophy. However, notebooks published after his death, titled Notebooks for an Ethics, displayed a dramatic about-turn in his thinking on the matter. The notebooks said that he now agreed with Hegel that the master/slave dynamic can be transcended through relations of mutual recognition – basically, the notebooks revealed a very different philosophy.

His work Existentialism is a Humanism presented arguments similar to Kant’s, which led to many scholars saying Sartre’s ideas came from Kant. However, in his notebooks he dismisses this idea and rejects Kantian ethics as a form of ‘slave morality’ and an ‘ethics of demands’. Ouch!

4. Charles Darwin’s notebooks

Darwin kept diaries in notebooks throughout the Beagle voyage that would lead him to think of the theory of evolution. He took fourteen of them on his trips to the shore. During the voyage he kept field notes on his observations. As the voyage drew to a close, he also used one (his Red notebook) for theoretical speculations on subjects like geology and the formation of coral reefs. After the voyage he started a new series of notebooks for his thoughts on transmutation (evolution) and metaphysical enquiries.

The notebooks give a detailed account of his research, speculation and gradual understanding of where species come from. In his Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837) he drew the first tree of descent with modification, or natural selection – more commonly known as an evolutionary tree. This sketch has become famous. The notebooks were mostly completed by the 1840s. These notebooks were essential to the development to the widely accepted and hugely important theory of natural selection, and the precursor to The Origin of Species.

3. Albert Einstein’s notebooks

Like Thomas Edison and many other eminent scientists and inventors, Einsteinkept a notebook to record his calculations and ideas. In March 2012, 80,000 documents written by or addressed to Einstein were published online by Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Einstein Papers Project (EPP) at Caltech. This collection includes Einstein’s notebooks, which show the thought process of a revolutionary genius.

One of these is the Zurich notebook, written in the winter of 1912/13. This notebook shows how Einstein came by his theory of relativity, complete with notes and calculations. Other notebooks show lecture notes. The notebooks and letter show that he didn’t work alone, but actually exchanged ideas with many other scientists.

The Zurich notebook shows light-hearted sketches by Einstein, include mathematical puzzles of the day – so even he liked to have fun. The rest of the notebook has serious physics, including electrodynamics in four dimensions, the line element of general relativity, motion in curved surfaces, gravitation, invariants and the Riemann Tensor.

The notebooks give a valuable insight into the day-to-day workings of a brilliant mind.

2. The Prison Notebooks

The Prison notebooks are a series of notebooks written by Italian MarxistAntonio Gramsci while he was imprisoned in 1926 by the Fascist regime for being the founder and leader of the Communist party. Gramsci was a philosopher, politician and political theorist. He wrote more than 30 notebooks with 3000 pages of history and analysis while he was imprisoned. The Prison Notebooks are thought of as a highly important and original contribution to 20th century political theory.

Gramsci’s writings pre-prison had been more specifically political, but The Prison Notebooks are relatively theoretical. Topics covered included education, intellectuals, fascism, hegemony and Marxism. He wrote these under the surveillance of a Fascist jailer, so he had to be careful about what he wrote. Because of this, his writings are disorganized and at times ambiguous. He was isolated from the events occurring outside prison, especially Stalinism and the victory of German fascism.

The notebooks were smuggled out of prison in the 1930s and published twenty years later.

1. Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks

Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks are famous for having been written in mirror script, from right to left. Some say this was to make them harder to decipher, but it may just have been because da Vinci was left-handed and wanted to avoid smudging the paper. He wrote in his notebooks daily, finishing with about13,000 pages of work.

The notebooks record the many interests and endeavors of this all-round Renaissance man, from maths to art to flying machines and diving suits. He wasn’t picky about what he put in his notebook, which is lucky, as it has given historians a precious resource. Leonardo made an inventory of his clothes in a notebook now held in Madrid, while in others he adds little memos to himself and shopping lists – all alongside complex mechanical notes and studies of human anatomy.

11. Gwen’s WIF notebook

This is a daily recording of what I post on WRITING IS FUN-DAMENTAL. I use this as a tangible resource to keep track of what I publish each day. Oh sure I could do a spreadsheet, but like all geniuses (ha, ha), handwritten notes are handy to have. Someday my children will wonder what to do with these.

“Since D-Day was June 6th, let’s go back to find celebrities who fought in a war and lived to tell the tale.”

Checking the list…….

On May 22, 1942, Ted Williams, arguably the best baseball player of that time, joined the US Marine Corps as a naval aviator. He flew the F4U Corsair in combat with the Japanese. Many other big name celebrities have fought for their country, and here we list 10 of them. Some fought and gained fame, allowing them to become celebrities, while others on the list were already famous people at the top of their field. Who else should be on the list?

Saluting their service……..

10. Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

“Randy Andy,” the younger brother of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, served in the Royal Navy during the Falklands War against Argentina. Although many in Britain were against having him serve in a war zone, with the possibility of the Queen’s son being killed or captured, Queen Elizabeth allowed him to serve as a Sea King helicopter pilot off the aircraft carrier Invincible during the war in the war zone. Normally, persons of royal heritage are under public pressure to serve for appearances sake. The royal family did not leave London during World War II despite the massive bombing campaign and later V-1 and V-2 missile campaigns against that city.

9. Ernest Hemingway, Writer.

“Papa” Hemingway enlisted in the Ambulance Drivers Corps in World War I and was severely wounded in action. He later served as a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War and in World War II. During World War II he led a French resistance unit in combat against Germans, which was in violation of the Geneva Convention. Despite being formally charged, his plea that he had only “provided advice” enabled him to be acquitted. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his service in World War II.

8. Bob Feller, Baseball player.

Bob Feller enlisted in the US Navy 2 days after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Unlike most professional athletes that were given jobs teaching physical fitness and such, Feller served on the battleship USS Alabama, earning 8 battle stars and 6 campaign ribbons. Cleveland Indian ace Feller was the greatest pitcher of his era, having achieved incredible feats such as pitching 44 shut outs, 3 no hitters, and 12 one hitters. His record of 348 strikeouts in one season stood from 1946 to 1965. He lost 4 years of his prime to military service, costing him the chance to be the greatest pitcher of all time. Ted Williams and Stan Musial, the greatest hitters in the American and National leagues during Feller’s era both named him the best pitcher of their time.

7. Winston Churchill, Politician and Writer.

Churchill, famous as the British Prime Minister during most of World War II, was a graduate of the British military academy, Sandhurst. During his service in Cuba, India, and Africa he was under fire at least 50 times. During the Boer War in 1899 he was taken as a prisoner of war, but escaped and rejoined British forces. Working as a war correspondent, he rejoined the military in the South African Light Horse (cavalry) and continued to fight, including an incident where he and his cousin captured 52 Boer soldiers. Writing extensively about his war experiences while in and out of the military, Churchill became the First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I until the Gallipoli disaster forced him out in 1915. This brave soul immediately joined the Army and served as a battalion commander continuing to bravely risk his life. When the British people picked Churchill (half-American, by the way) as their leader for World War II they picked a warrior.

6. Pat Tillman, NFL Football Player.

Despite having a great football career, gaining entry to the College Football Hall of Fame and excelling in the NFL, Tillman turned down a 3 year contract for $3.6 million in order to enlist in the US Army in 2002. Tillman and his brother Kevin had both trained as Rangers, a super tough Army elite unit. Apparently from a family of true patriots, Kevin had been signed by the Cleveland Indians to play professional baseball, but chose to defend his country instead, just like Pat. Pat served in extensive combat in Afghanistan until he was killed by friendly fire in 2004. Unfortunately, his death was marred by Army brass engaging in a cover up of his accidental death in an effort to avoid the inevitable embarrassment of having killed such a high profile soldier. The last time a pro football player had been killed in combat was in 1970 when Bob Kalsu was killed in Viet Nam. (The only other pro football player to die in Viet Nam was Cleveland Brown Don Steinbrunner.)

5. John McCain III, Politician.

Unlike many politicians that are draft dodgers and keep their own sons safe at home during wartime, John McCain had a father and grandfather that were both Admirals in the US Navy. He flew attack jets off aircraft carriers during the Viet Nam War and was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, held prisoner until 1973. Not only did he endure torture and provide a fine example to his fellow prisoners, when he was given the opportunity to be released (obviously for communist propaganda purposes) he refused and remained a POW until released with everyone else.

4. Jimmy Stewart, Actor.

The first big movie star to join the military in World War II, Stewart actually had to go on a weight lifting regimen with a noted body builder in order to gain the 5 pounds needed to meet the 148 pound requirement to be a pilot! He became a bomber pilot and flew B-17 missions over Germany, one of the most dangerous assignments of the war. Stewart stayed in the Air Force Reserve, eventually becoming a brigadier general and flying the B-36, B-47 and B-52. Unlike many other movie stars that had symbolic non-combat roles (such as make believe heroes like John Wayne and Ronald Reagan), Stewart was the real deal.

3. George Washington, et al, Presidents.

Many of our presidents have served during time of war, and many of those on combat operations, starting with George Washington. Some of these veterans turned president had been Generals, while others were of lesser rank. William Henry Harrison and Andrew Jackson achieved fame as fighters, propelling them to the White House, and Teddy Roosevelt charging San Juan Hill was fresh in the mind of voters when he was elected vice president. John F. Kennedy’s adventures on PT-109 during World War II were famous, and most recently, George H.W. Bush was a torpedo bomber pilot in World War II and was shot down in combat. Since then, the 3 presidents we have had since have not been to war.

2. John Glenn, Astronaut and Politician.

The third American in space and first American to orbit the earth, Glenn rode his fame to the US Senate, representing Ohio, and was often considered as a possible presidential or vice presidential candidate. Prior to that he served his country as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, flying F$U Corsairs in World War II and then F9F Panther Jets in the Korean War. He also flew the F-86 Sabre on an exchange program with the US Air Force. He managed to shoot down 3 MiG fighter jets in Korea, and Ted Williams flew for a time as his wingman. An accomplished test pilot, Glenn was the first person to make a transcontinental supersonic flight from (California to New York) piloting an F8U Crusader.

1. Ted Williams, Baseball Player.

As described above, Williams flew Marine Corps fighter planes in combat in the Pacific during World War II. He had joined the Naval Reserve in 1942 after appealing his draft status of 1A and getting it changed to 3A. Negative publicity encouraged his change of heart and he went on active duty in 1943 after a 1942 baseball season where he accomplished the very rare feat of the batting triple crown, leading the league in batting average, home runs, and RBI’s. Incredibly, he was recalled to active duty during the Korean War and he flew F9F Panther Jets in combat. His years lost to military service cost him the chance to compile career statistics that would probably have stood for many years.

SpringQuotables

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)